It’s time for US small businesses to offer a four-day workweek
Every small business owner I talk to has the same problem: we can’t find enough people to do the work we need. Well, I have an answer: perhaps we should be offering a four-day workweek.
“What? A four-day workweek?” I’ll often hear when I propose this. “I need my people to work more, not less!”
Sure, it sounds a little crazy, particularly for the typical small business owner – who, according to the Small Business Administration – is generally over the age of 55. But to those people – many of whom are my clients – I say, keep an open mind. The reality is that a four-day workweek is steadily becoming a workplace reality. And leveraging it could be a huge benefit for a small business owner.
The four-day workweek concept is already growing in acceptance. A test of this model from 2015 to 2019 in Iceland of more than 2,500 workers (which represents more than 1% of the country’s working population, or the equivalent of more than 16 million workers in the US) proved to be an “overwhelming success”. Iceland’s experiment has motivated governments in New Zealand, Singapore and Spain to consider four-day workweek models in their countries.
The Icelandic test is also behind a group of more than 100 progressives in Congress – led by Congressman Mark Takano – to introduce legislation requiring US companies to limit their workweeks to 32 hours. And although it’s unlikely that this legislation will see the light of day here in the near term, many US companies are already taking it upon themselves to try out their own versions of the four-day workweek. And for good reasons.
For example, a San Francisco-based e-commerce company called Bolt started the policy for its 550 employees this year. “It’s actually not about trying to cram five days into
Read more on theguardian.com
